


Defender of the Weak

by johnny cade (johnnycake)



Series: Switchblades and Leather [31]
Category: The Outsiders (1983), The Outsiders - S. E. Hinton
Genre: Gen, M/M, talk of abuse, that's about it, this is pretty vanilla compared to what i mostly write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 23:33:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15651210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnnycake/pseuds/johnny%20cade
Summary: When Ponyboy mouths off to Johnny, Dallas feels some kind of way about it.





	Defender of the Weak

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bdbye](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bdbye/gifts).



> i got this as a request from one of my friends because we both agree that ponyboy whines...like a lot....
> 
> also this is obviously an au of if dally had walked home with them rather than gone off by himself. that being said this is also assuming dally eventually went over to buck's and everything else happened the way it does in the book.

Still in a bad mood, but not wanting to be the party-pooper of the group, Dallas went back to the drive-in to find Johnny and Ponyboy when the movie was almost over. He came back with a split lip and a blackening eye – courtesy of Tim Shepherd, who’d tried to beat the tar of him for slashing his tires, which Dally honestly couldn’t blame him for. He pushed Johnny away when the kid tried to examine the bruises, a look of concern on his face. He didn’t speak to Cherry or Marcia again, knowing that one or both of them would tell him what for and Johnny might too.

The movie ended not too long later and the six of them followed the cars and other people out of the drive-in, back towards their neighborhood. Cherry and Marcia were going to walk with Two-Bit to his house and call their parents for a ride home. Dally couldn’t help wondering what their parents would think when they came to pick them up on the east side of town, wondered if their parents would warn them against hanging out with boys like them ever again.

The thought made him bitter as he watched Cherry and Ponyboy talk ahead of him.

They were just like any other boys their age. The only difference was they couldn’t afford Mustangs, madras, or Cadillacs. They couldn’t afford to buy nice slacks and heavy class rings. All they could do was buy blue jeans and cigarettes and be themselves. Maybe that was what Cherry had meant by things being rough all over: the Socs were forced to be fake. And maybe that was the reason they hated the greasers so much: because they could be themselves without being rejected by their friends.

That made Dally feel a little bit better.

Johnny walked next to him in silence, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his denim jacket. In the shadows cast by the large streetlights they passed under, the scar on his face was sometimes invisible, sometimes not, but when Dally saw it in the stark light, his anger came back all over again and his own hands clenched into fists in the pockets of his bomber jacket.

The Socs might have it rough in a different way alright, but that didn’t make it okay for them to beat up Johnny, who never hurt a fly, who went around anthills instead of destroying them, when he’d never done anything to them to begin with. Nothing except exist and that was what made all of this so fucking unfair. Out of all of them, Johnny deserved the Socs’ wrath the least and yet he got it the most.

Suddenly, Cherry stopped and leaned against the chain-link fence they were passing, saying to Ponyboy, “Tell me about your oldest brother, you never seem to talk about him.”

Dally and Johnny caught up with them and stopped walking too, watching as Ponyboy pulled a cigarette out of the pack in his back pocket and lit it. “What’s to tell?” Ponyboy replied, taking a puff off the cigarette and blowing the smoke towards the sky. “He’s big and roofs houses.”

“I feel like I know Soda from how much you talk about him,” Cherry replied, rolling her eyes. “Tell me about Darry! Is he wild and reckless like Soda? Or dreamy like you?”

For a moment, Ponyboy turned bright red at the compliment, but then his face twisted and he walked around Cherry saying in a voice full of anger, “He ain’t like Soda and he sure ain’t like me! He can’t stand me! He probably wants to stick me in some boys home, but Soda won’t let him!”

Two-Bit and Marcia who had been walking ahead of Cherry and Ponyboy had stopped as well and backtracked to stand next to the rest of the group as well and at Ponyboy’s words, Two-Bit’s brows drew together as he asked, “What’re you talkin’ about Ponyboy?”

“C’mon, Ponyboy,” Johnny added in a quiet voice, barely audible above the cars on the street, surprising everyone by speaking at all. “Y’all get along fine now.”

“No, we don’t!” Ponyboy snapped back. “And you can just shut your trap Johnny Cade, cause you ain’t wanted home neither! And no one can blame ‘em!”

Johnny’s eyes went wide and round and he flinched like Ponyboy had hit him.

Dally glared his nails digging into his palms as he shouted, “What the fuck Ponyboy? You know better than to talk to Johnny like that. You got the best home out of all of us and you know it! So why don’t you shut the fuck up and be grateful instead of takin’ your anger out on Johnny. Or would you rather have his life? Is that what you’re sayin’? You’d rather have Darry knock you around and Soda yell at you all the fucking time? Is that it?”

“No, I-I didn’t mean –” Ponyboy began, but the damage had already been done.

“Shut your mouth, kid,” Two-Bit jumped in. “If you wasn’t Soda’s kid brother, I’d beat the tar outta you. You know better than to talk to Johnny like that.” He went over and wrapped his arm around Johnny’s shoulders, saying in a softer voice, “He didn’t mean it Johnny.”

But Johnny only smiled bleakly and said, “It’s the truth. I don’t care.”

And that only made Dally even more angry. He walked over to the fence and slammed his fist into it until his knuckles started to bleed, then he rounded on Ponyboy and said, “You really think you got it so fuckin’ rough? Do you have any idea what goes on in any of our houses? My old man is gone all the fuckin’ time and when he’s home he yells at me and puts his cigarettes out on my arms. Two-Bit’s folks don’t even acknowledge he’s there half the time! And Steve’s old man may treat him right, but he’s gone so much cause of his work, it’s probably easy to love your kid when you hardly see him. And yeah you lost your folks, but so fucking what?! Would you rather have folks like ours? Really? Would you? You don’t know the _half_ of what Johnny’s parents do to him. Only what he tells you about and maybe there’s a reason he don’t tell you everythin’: cause this is how you behave!”

Ponyboy seemed at a loss for words and Johnny went up to Dallas, placing a hand on his arm, saying quietly, “Dal, it’s okay, man. I’m okay. It ain’t a big deal, okay? He didn’t mean it.”

“I don’t fuckin’ care if he meant it or not,” Dally replied, pulling away from Johnny. He pointed at Ponyboy, now only inches from him. “You got it so damn good you don’t even know how good you got it. So you keep your trap shut and think before you say somethin’ so stupid again. Or I _will_ beat the tar out of you. I don’t care if you’re Soda’s kid brother.”

Ponyboy swallowed hard, but didn’t reply. No one did.

Because everyone knew that Dally was right. Everything he’d said was the truth. And while Dally loved and cared about Ponyboy, the fact he could sit there and act like his life was so hard when Johnny couldn’t even go home because his folks might beat him or yell at him or do something much, much worse, made him angry.

Again he thought that Johnny deserved this the least out of all of them. And again he wanted to punch something because he was now realizing Johnny couldn’t escape the mistreatment anywhere. Not even in the gang it seemed. Not even from his best friend.

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't very long because yeah it doesn't make sense for it to be longer imo


End file.
